Gene Munster: Elon Musk’s SpaceX will eventually build a Starlink smartphone

Deepwater Asset Management Managing Partner Gene Munster argued on X that SpaceX will eventually produce its own handset, even as Elon Musk has repeatedly said he does not want to make a phone. The comment came in response to SpaceX’s announcement of a deal to acquire nationwide low-band spectrum that strengthens Starlink’s path toward becoming a major U.S. mobile carrier.⁠

Elon says he doesn’t want to make a phone. I still think $SPCX eventually will.

A vertically integrated handset on a Starlink mobile network could deliver features carriers can’t match, and cheaper service.

That’s a bigger problem for Samsung than Apple. $AAPL’s device and services tie-in is harder to break.

— Gene Munster (@munster_gene) October 9, 2026

On October 8, 2026, SpaceX said it had reached an agreement to acquire Grain Management’s nationwide portfolio of low-band spectrum licenses—up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum in the 800 MHz band. Grain had obtained the licenses from T-Mobile earlier in the year under conditions tied to the T-Mobile–Sprint merger. Combined with the roughly 65 MHz of mid-band spectrum SpaceX is acquiring from EchoStar and the company’s next-generation Starlink constellation (including FCC authorization for thousands of additional satellites), the low-band airwaves address a key technical gap: better signal penetration indoors and through obstacles such as walls and foliage. SpaceX stated that the combination positions Starlink Mobile to offer reliable service “indoors, outdoors, in cellular dead zones, and everywhere in between,” with existing phones already supporting the 800 MHz band. Elon Musk called the development a “very big deal.”

Munster wrote: “Elon says he doesn’t want to make a phone. I still think $SPCX eventually will. A vertically integrated handset on a Starlink mobile network could deliver features carriers can’t match, and cheaper service. That’s a bigger problem for Samsung than Apple. $AAPL’s device and services tie-in is harder to break.” He contends that controlling both the network and the device would let SpaceX offer capabilities and pricing that traditional carriers and handset makers cannot easily replicate.⁠

Musk has long expressed reluctance. At a 2024 Pennsylvania town hall he said, “The idea of making a phone makes me want to die. But if we have to make a phone, we will. But we will aspire not to make a phone,” framing the decision as a potential response to heavy-handed app-store or platform controls by Apple or Google. In February 2026 he stated “We are not developing a phone” after reports suggested otherwise. In late January he allowed that such a device was “not out of the question at some point” but would be “a very different device than current phones,” optimized purely for running high-performance-per-watt neural nets. In July he dismissed as “utterly false” a Wall Street Journal report that SpaceX had shown investors a slim, AI-oriented handset prototype ahead of its IPO. He has also described future phones more broadly as AI “edge nodes” rather than traditional smartphones.

SpaceX went public in June 2026 in the largest IPO in history, pricing at $135 per share under the ticker SPCX and achieving an initial valuation near $1.8 trillion. Starlink has been a major growth driver; the company has been building both satellite direct-to-device capabilities and, with the new spectrum, plans for hybrid terrestrial infrastructure. The spectrum deals move SpaceX from primarily partnering with existing carriers toward operating its own significant mobile network presence in the U.S.⁠

Whether SpaceX ultimately ships a conventional phone, an AI-first device, or neither remains speculative. Munster’s view highlights the strategic logic of vertical integration once Starlink Mobile has nationwide low- and mid-band spectrum and a large constellation. Apple’s tight hardware-software-services ecosystem is widely viewed as more resilient to disruption than Samsung’s more open Android-based approach, which is why Munster sees the greater risk for the Korean manufacturer.

MacDailyNews Take: For now, Musk himself continues to signal that a homegrown smartphone is not a priority, unless competitive or platform pressures make it necessary. Apple simply needs to make sure that iPhones always work well with Starlink Mobile and SpaceXAI’s Grok.

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